I understood now that he alluded to the Pope. "You have told me that a son of Buddha, Issa, the elect among all, had spread your religion on the Earth. Who is he?" I asked.

At this question the lama's eyes opened wide; he looked at me with astonishment and p.r.o.nounced some words I could not catch, murmuring in an unintelligible way. "Issa," he finally replied, "is a great prophet, one of the first after the twenty-two Buddhas. He is greater than any one of all the Dalai-Lamas, for he const.i.tutes part of the spirituality of our Lord. It is he who has instructed you; he who brought back into the bosom of G.o.d the frivolous and wicked souls; he who made you worthy of the beneficence of the Creator, who has ordained that each being should know good and evil. His name and his acts have been chronicled in our sacred writings, and when reading how his great life pa.s.sed away in the midst of an erring people, we weep for the horrible sin of the heathen who murdered him, after subjecting him to torture."

I was struck by this recital of the lama. The prophet Issa--his tortures and death--our Christian Dalai-Lama--the Buddhist recognizing Christianity--all these made me think more and more of Jesus Christ. I asked my interpreter not to lose a single word of what the lama told me.

"Where can those writings be found, and who compiled them?" I asked the monk.

"The princ.i.p.al scrolls--which were written in India and Nepaul, at different epochs, as the events happened--are in Lha.s.sa; several thousands in number. In some great convents are to be found copies, which the lamas, during their sojourn in Lha.s.sa, have made, at various times, and have then given to their cloisters as souvenirs of the period they spent with the Dalai-Lama."

"But you, yourselves; do you not possess copies of the scrolls bearing upon the prophet Issa?"

"We have not. Our convent is insignificant, and since its foundation our successive lamas have had only a few hundred ma.n.u.scripts in their library. The great cloisters have several thousands of them; but they are sacred things which will not, anywhere, be shown to you."

We spoke together a few minutes longer, after which I went home, all the while thinking of the lama's statements. Issa, a prophet of the Buddhists! But, how could this be? Of Jewish origin, he lived in Palestine and in Egypt; and the Gospels do not contain one word, not even the least allusion, to the part which Buddhism should have played in the education of Jesus.

I made up my mind to visit all the convents of Thibet, in the hope of gathering fuller information upon the prophet Issa, and perhaps copies of the chronicles bearing upon this subject.

We traversed the Namykala Pa.s.s, at 30,000 feet of alt.i.tude, whence we descended into the valley of the River Salinoumah. Turning southward, we gained Karbou, leaving behind us, on the opposite bank, numerous villages, among other, Chagdoom, which is at the top of a rock, an extremely imposing sight. Its houses are white and have a sort of festive look, with their two and three stories. This, by the way, is a common peculiarity of all the villages of Ladak. The eye of the European, travelling in Kachmyr, would soon lose sight of all architecture to which he had been accustomed. In Ladak, on the contrary, he would be agreeably surprised at seeing the little two and three-story houses, reminders to him of those in European provinces. Near the city of Karbou, upon two perpendicular rocks, one sees the ruins of a little town or village. A tempest and an earthquake are said to have shaken down its walls, the solidity of which seems to have been exceptional.

The next day I traversed the Fotu-La Pa.s.s, at an alt.i.tude of 13,500 feet. At its summit stands a little _t'horthene_ (chapel). Thence, following the dry bed of a stream, I descended to the hamlet of Lamayure, the sudden appearance of which is a surprise to the traveller.

A convent, which seems grafted on the side of the rock, or held there in some miraculous way, dominates the village. Stairs are unknown in this cloister. In order to pa.s.s from one story of it to another, ropes are used. Communication with the world outside is through a labyrinth of pa.s.sages in the rock. Under the windows of the convent--which make one think of birds' nests on the face of a cliff---is a little inn, the rooms of which are little inviting. Hardly had I stretched myself on the carpet in one of them, when the monks, dressed in their yellow robes, filled the apartment, bothered me with questions as to whence I came, the purpose of my coming, where I was going, and so on, finally inviting me to come and see them.

In spite of my fatigue I accepted their invitation and set out with them, to climb up the excavated pa.s.sages in the rock, which were enc.u.mbered with an infinity of prayer cylinders and wheels, which I could not but touch and set turning as I brushed past them. They are placed there that they may be so turned, saving to the pa.s.sers-by the time they might otherwise lose in saying their prayers--as if their affairs were so absorbing, and their time so precious, that they could not find leisure to pray. Many pious Buddhists use for this purpose an apparatus arranged to be turned by the current of a stream. I have seen a long row of cylinders, provided with their prayer formulas, placed along a river bank, in such a way that the water kept them constantly in motion, this ingenious device freeing the proprietors from any further obligation to say prayers themselves.

I sat down on a bench in the hall, where semi-obscurity reigned. The walls were garnished with little statues of Buddha, books and prayer-wheels. The loquacious lamas began explaining to me the significance of each object.

"And those books?" I asked them; "they, no doubt, have reference to religion."

"Yes, sir. These are a few religious volumes which deal with the primary and princ.i.p.al rites of the life common to all. We possess several parts of the words of Buddha consecrated to the Great and Indivisible Divine Being, and to all that issue from his hands."

"Is there not, among those books, some account of the prophet Issa?"

"No, sir," answered the monk. "We only possess a few princ.i.p.al treatises relating to the observance of the religious rites. As for the biographies of our saints, they are collected in Lha.s.sa. There are even great cloisters which have not had the time to procure them. Before coming to this gonpa, I was for several years in a great convent on the other side of Ladak, and have seen there thousands of books, and scrolls copied out of various books by the lamas of the monastery."

By some further interrogation I learned that the convent in question was near Leh, but my persistent inquiries had the effect of exciting the suspicions of the lamas. They showed me the way out with evident pleasure, and regaining my room, I fell asleep--after a light lunch--leaving orders with my Hindu to inform himself in a skillful way, from some of the younger lamas of the convent, about the monastery in which their chief had lived before coming to Lamayure.

In the morning, when we set forth on our journey, the Hindu told me that he could get nothing from the lamas, who were very reticent. I will not stop to describe the life of the monks in those convents, for it is the same in all the cloisters of Ladak. I have seen the celebrated monastery of Leh--of which I shall have to speak later on--and learned there the strange existences the monks and religious people lead, which is everywhere the same. In Lamayure commences a declivity which, through a steep, narrow and sombre gorge, extends toward India.

Without having the least idea of the dangers which the descent presented, I sent my carriers in advance and started on a route, rather pleasant at the outset, which pa.s.ses between the brown clay hills, but soon it produced upon me the most depressing effect, as though I was traversing a gloomy subterranean pa.s.sage. Then the road came out on the flank of the mountain, above a terrible abyss. If a rider had met me, we could not possibly have pa.s.sed each other, the way was so narrow. All description would fail to convey a sense of the grandeur and wild beauty of this canon, the summit of the walls of which seemed to reach the sky.

At some points it became so narrow that from my saddle I could, with my cane, touch the opposite rock. At other places, death might be fancied looking up expectantly, from the abyss, at the traveller. It was too late to dismount. In entering alone this gorge, I had not the faintest idea that I would have occasion to regret my foolish imprudence. I had not realized its character. It was simply an enormous creva.s.se, rent by some t.i.tanic throe of nature, some tremendous earthquake, which had split the granite mountain. In its bottom I could just distinguish a hardly perceptible white thread, an impetuous torrent, the dull roar of which filled the defile with mysterious and impressive sounds.

Far overhead extended, narrow and sinuously, a blue ribbon, the only glimpse of the celestial world that the frowning granite walls permitted to be seen. It was a thrilling pleasure, this majestic view of nature.

At the same time, its rugged severity, the vastness of its proportions, the deathly silence only invaded by the ominous murmur from the depths beneath, all together filled me with an unconquerable depression. I had about eight miles in which to experience these sensations, at once sweet and painful. Then, turning to the right, our little caravan reached a small valley, almost surrounded by precipitous granite rocks, which mirrored themselves in the Indus. On the bank of the river stands the little fortress Khalsi, a celebrated fortification dating from the epoch of the Musselman invasion, by which runs the wild road from Kachmyr to Thibet.

We crossed the Indus on an almost suspended bridge which led directly to the door of the fortress, thus impossible of evasion. Rapidly we traversed the valley, then the village of Khalsi, for I was anxious to spend the night in the hamlet of Snowely, which is placed upon terraces descending to the Indus. The two following days I travelled tranquilly and without any difficulties to overcome, along the sh.o.r.e of the Indus, in a picturesque country--which brought me to Leh, the capital of Ladak.

While traversing the little valley of Saspoula, at a distance of several kilometres from the village of the same name, I found "_t'horthenes_"

and two cloisters, above one of which floated the French flag. Later on, I learned that a French engineer had presented the flag to the monks, who displayed it simply as a decoration of their building.

I pa.s.sed the night at Saspoula and certainly did not forget to visit the cloisters, seeing there for the tenth time the omnipresent dust-covered images of Buddha; the flags and banners heaped in a corner; ugly masks on the floor; books and papyrus rolls heaped together without order or care, and the inevitable abundance of prayer-wheels. The lamas demonstrated a particular pleasure in exhibiting these things, doing it with the air of shopmen displaying their goods, with very little care for the degree of interest the traveller may take in them. "We must show everything, in the hope that the sight alone of these sacred objects will force the traveller to believe in the divine grandeur of the human soul."

Respecting the prophet Issa, they gave me the same account I already had, and I learned, what I had known before, that the books which could instruct me about him were at Lha.s.sa, and that only the great monasteries possessed some copies. I did not think any more of pa.s.sing Kara-koroum, but only of finding the history of the prophet Issa, which would, perhaps, bring to light the entire life of the best of men, and complete the rather vague information which the Gospels afford us about him.

Not far from Leh, and at the entrance of the valley of the same name, our road pa.s.sed near an isolated rock, on the top of which were constructed a fort--with two towers and without garrison--and a little convent named Pitak. A mountain, 10,500 feet high, protects the entrance to Thibet. There the road makes a sudden turn toward the north, in the direction of Leh, six miles from Pitak and a thousand feet higher.

Immense granite mountains tower above Leh, to a height of 18,000 or 19,000 feet, their crests covered with eternal snow. The city itself, surrounded by a girdle of stunted aspen trees, rises upon successive terraces, which are dominated by an old fort and the palaces of the ancient sovereigns of Ladak. Toward evening I made my entrance into Leh, and stopped at a bengalow constructed especially for Europeans, whom the road from India brings here in the hunting season.

Ladak

Ladak formerly was part of Great Thibet. The powerful invading forces from the north which traversed the country to conquer Kachmyr, and the wars of which Ladak was the theatre, not only reduced it to misery, but eventually subtracted it from the political domination of Lha.s.sa, and made it the prey of one conqueror after another. The Musselmen, who seized Kachmyr and Ladak at a remote epoch, converted by force the poor inhabitants of old Thibet to the faith of Islam. The political existence of Ladak ended with the annexation of this country to Kachmyr by the seiks, which, however, permitted the Ladakians to return to their ancient beliefs. Two-thirds of the inhabitants took advantage of this opportunity to rebuild their gonpas and take up their past life anew.

Only the Baltistans remained Musselman schuttes--a sect to which the conquerors of the country had belonged. They, however, have only conserved a vague shadow of Islamism, the character of which manifests itself in their ceremonials and in the polygamy which they practice.

Some lamas affirmed to me that they did not despair of one day bringing them back to the faith of their ancestors.

From the religious point of view Ladak is a dependency of Lha.s.sa, the capital of Thibet and the place of residence of the Dalai-Lama. In Lha.s.sa are located the princ.i.p.al Khoutoukhtes, or Supreme Lamas, and the Chogzots, or administrators. Politically, it is under the authority of the Maharadja of Kachmyr, who is represented there by a governor.

The inhabitants of Ladak belong to the Chinese-Touranian race, and are divided into Ladakians and Tchampas. The former lead a sedentary existence, building villages of two-story houses along the narrow valleys, are cleanly in their habits, and cultivators of the soil. They are excessively ugly; thin, with stooping figures and small heads set deep between their shoulders; their cheek bones salient, foreheads narrow, eyes black and brilliant, as are those of all the Mongol race; noses flat, mouths large and thin-lipped; and from their small chins, very thinly garnished by a few hairs, deep wrinkles extend upward furrowing their hollow cheeks. To all this, add a close-shaven head with only a little bristling fringe of hair, and you will have the general type, not alone of Ladak, but of entire Thibet.

The women are also of small stature, and have exceedingly prominent cheek bones, but seem to be of much more robust const.i.tution. A healthy red tinges their cheeks and sympathetic smiles linger upon their lips.

They have good dispositions, joyous inclinations, and are fond of laughing.

The severity of the climate and rudeness of the country, do not permit to the Ladakians much lat.i.tude in quality and colors of costume. They wear gowns of simple gray linen and coa.r.s.e dull-hued clothing of their own manufacture. The pantaloons of the men only descend to their knees.

People in good circ.u.mstances wear, in addition to the ordinary dress, the "choga," a sort of overcoat which is draped on the back when not wrapped around the figure. In winter they wear fur caps, with big ear flaps, and in summer cover their heads with a sort of cloth hood, the top of which dangles on one side, like a Phrygian cap. Their shoes are made of felt and covered with leather. A whole a.r.s.enal of little things hangs down from their belts, among which you will find a needle case, a knife, a pen and inkstand, a tobacco pouch, a pipe, and a diminutive specimen of the omnipresent prayer-cylinder.

The Thibetan men are generally so lazy, that if a braid of hair happens to become loose, it is not tressed up again for three months, and when once a shirt is put on the body, it is not again taken off until it falls to pieces. Their overcoats are always unclean, and, on the back, one may contemplate a long oily stripe imprinted by the braid of hair, which is carefully greased every day. They wash themselves once a year, but even then do not do so voluntarily, but because compelled by law.

They emit such a terrible stench that one avoids, as much as possible, being near them.

The Thibetan women, on the contrary, are very fond of cleanliness and order. They wash themselves daily and as often as may be needful. Short and clean chemises hide their dazzling white necks. The Thibetan woman throws on her round shoulders a red jacket, the flaps of which are covered by tight pantaloons of green or red cloth, made in such a manner as to puff up and so protect the legs against the cold. She wears embroidered red half boots, trimmed and lined with fur. A large cloth petticoat with numerous folds completes her home toilet. Her hair is arranged in thin braids, to which, by means of pins, a large piece of floating cloth is attached,--which reminds one of the headdress so common in Italy. Underneath this sort of veil are suspended a variety of various colored pebbles, coins and pieces of metal. The ears are covered by flaps made of cloth or fur. A furred sheepskin covers the back, poor women contenting themselves with a simple plain skin of the animal, while wealthy ladies wear veritable cloaks, lined with red cloth and adorned with gold fringes.

The Ladak woman, whether walking in the streets or visiting her neighbors, always carries upon her back a conical basket, the smaller end of which is toward the ground. They fill it with the dung of horses or cows, which const.i.tute the combustible of the country. Every woman has money of her own, and spends it for jewelry. Generally she purchases, at a small expense, large pieces of turquoise, which are added to the _bizarre_ ornaments of her headdress. I have seen pieces so worn which weighed nearly five pounds. The Ladak woman occupies a social position for which she is envied by all women of the Orient. She is free and respected. With the exception of some rural work, she pa.s.ses the greatest part of her time in visiting. It must, however, be added that women's gossip is here a perfectly unknown thing.

The settled population of Ladak is engaged in agriculture, but they own so little land (the share of each may amount to about eight acres) that the revenue drawn from it is insufficient to provide them with the barest necessities and does not permit them to pay taxes. Manual occupations are generally despised. Artisans and musicians form the lowest cla.s.s of society. The name by which they are designated is Bem, and people are very careful not to contract any alliance with them. The hours of leisure left by rural work are spent in hunting the wild sheep of Thibet, the skins of which are highly valued in India. The poorest, _i.e._, those who have not the means to purchase arms for hunting, hire themselves as coolies. This is also an occupation of women, who are very capable of enduring arduous toil. They are healthier than their husbands, whose laziness goes so far that, careless of cold or heat, they are capable of spending a whole night in the open air on a bed of stones rather than take the trouble to go to bed.

Polyandry (which I shall treat later more fully) causes the formation of very large families, who, in common, cultivate their jointly possessed lands, with the a.s.sistance of yaks, zos and zomos (oxen and cows). A member of a family cannot detach himself from it, and when he dies, his share reverts to the survivors in common.

They sow but little wheat and the grain is very small, owing to the severity of the climate. They also harvest barley, which they pulverize before selling. When work in the field is ended, all male inhabitants go to gather on the mountain a wild herb called "enoriota," and large thorn bushes or "dama," which are used as fuel, since combustibles are scarce in Ladak. You see there neither trees nor gardens, and only exceptionally thin clumps of willows and poplars grow on the sh.o.r.es of the rivers. Near the villages are also found some aspen trees; but, on account of the unfertility of the ground, arboriculture is unknown and gardening is little successful.

The absence of wood is especially noticeable in the buildings, which are made of sun-dried bricks, or, more frequently, of stones of medium size which are agglomerated with a kind of mortar composed of clay and chopped straw. The houses of the settled inhabitants are two stories high, their fronts whitewashed, and their window-sashes painted with lively colors. The flat roof forms a terrace which is decorated with wild flowers, and here, during good weather, the inhabitants spend much of their time contemplating nature, or turning their prayer-wheels.

Every dwelling-house is composed of many rooms; among them always one of superior size, the walls of which are decorated with superb fur-skins, and which is reserved for visitors. In the other rooms are beds and other furniture. Rich people possess, moreover, a special room filled with all kinds of idols, and set apart as a place of worship.

Life here is very regular. They eat anything attainable, without much choice; the princ.i.p.al nourishment of the Ladak people, however, being exceedingly simple. Their breakfast consists of a piece of rye bread. At dinner, they serve on the table a bowl with meal into which lukewarm water is stirred with little rods until the mixture a.s.sumes the consistency of thick paste. From this, small portions are scooped out and eaten with milk. In the evening, bread and tea are served. Meat is a superfluous luxury. Only the hunters introduce some variety in their alimentation, by eating the meat of wild sheep, eagles or pheasants, which are very common in this country.

During the day, on every excuse and opportunity, they drink "tchang," a kind of pale, unfermented beer.

If it happens that a Ladakian, mounted on a pony (such privileged people are very rare), goes to seek work in the surrounding country, he provides himself with a small stock of meal; when dinner time comes, he descends to a river or spring, mixes with water, in a wooden cup that he always has with him, some of the meal, swallows the simple refreshment and washes it down with water.